


All Places Are Alike To Him

by inexplicifics



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Cats, Fluff, Gen, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Gets To Pet A Cat, Pre-Canon, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:48:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25325653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inexplicifics/pseuds/inexplicifics
Summary: Holed up in a barn, sheltering from the rain, Geralt encounters a cat that's almost as unwelcome as he is.It sticks around.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Original Animal Character(s)
Comments: 96
Kudos: 1047
Collections: Best Geralt





	All Places Are Alike To Him

“You too, huh, cat,” Geralt says, and haggles a bit of jerky off the end of the strip he’s gnawing on, tossing it underhand towards the corner where the cat is hunkered down, making a low unhappy sort of noise deep in its chest. Even to witcher senses, it’s nothing but a darker shadow except for the glint of its eyes and the very faint twitch of its tail. It eyes him dubiously, then inches forward to sniff at the meat before nibbling daintily at it.

Geralt was already in here, holed up in a moderately warm spot in the slightly moldy hay, when the cat was chased in by someone flinging rocks at it, swearing loudly at the bad luck of seeing a black cat cross his path. Geralt has to confess to some fellow feeling; _he’s_ been chased off with stones often enough, by people who think encountering a witcher is the worst luck imaginable.

The cat’s a scrawny thing, skin and bones under that inky fur. He tosses it another small bit of jerky. The cat inches further out of the shadow to take the offering, watching him sidelong with glowing green eyes, like it thinks he’ll change his mind at any minute.

That feels uncomfortably familiar, too.

“Not gonna throw stones at you,” Geralt says, keeping his voice low and soothing like it is when he talks to Roach - well, as soothing as his gravelly tones can ever be. “We’re all just in here to shelter from the rain.” _And the stones_ , he doesn’t add aloud.

He keeps throwing it bits of jerky until the strip is gone; he really doesn’t have enough food to spare, but the damn cat looks more than half starved. When it sees that no more food is forthcoming, it retreats into its shadowy corner again and curls up, closing its eyes and becoming a slightly darker patch of night.

Geralt doesn’t expect anything to come of the incident, really. He made a half-starved cat’s evening a little less shitty; that’s the closest to a victory he’s had all day, aside from finding this old barn in the first place, so he’ll take it and be glad of it. In the morning he rises and tacks Roach up, murmuring compliments to her patience and good sense, and doesn’t see the cat anywhere around; it probably snuck out sometime in the night. Maybe it caught some mice along the way; certainly he heard several rustling around in the hay during the night. He wishes it luck, in an idle sort of way, and leads Roach out onto the road.

It’s midmorning when a faint _mrp_ noise rises from one of his saddlebags.

Geralt stops right there in the middle of the road and turns, warily, to see that the flap of his saddlebag has been nudged askew, and the cat’s head is poking out. It blinks at him. He blinks at it. It _mrp_ s again.

“What the fuck, cat,” Geralt says. It’s not even the saddlebag with his _food_ in it - that might have made sense - it’s the one with all his potions vials. It can’t be _comfortable_.

“ _Mrp_ ,” says the cat.

“Don’t cats _meow_?” Geralt asks it.

“ _Mrp!_ ” it says.

Geralt is talking to a cat.

Well, he talks to his horse all the time; how is this different?

“Roach,” he says slowly, “do you mind having an extra passenger?”

Roach swings her head around to look at the cat, and snorts. The cat _mrp_ s at her, too. She looks away, utterly disinterested. Well, alright then.

“I’m not going to keep feeding you,” Geralt informs the cat, knowing it’s a lie even as he says it.

“ _Mrp_ ,” says the cat.

*

He makes camp that night in the forest, well off the road, and hunts himself a brace of rabbits. The cat hops out of the saddlebag when he sets it on the ground, prowls around the little clearing twice, and then sits down near the fire, several arms’ length from Geralt, and watches him skin and gut the rabbits. He eyes it for a while, and sighs, and tosses it the offal. The cat pounces on the bloody mess happily. Geralt puts the meat on a stick and sears it, more because it’s good to stay in the habit of cooking meat than for any other reason, and eats his share - _his_ share, fuck, he hunted the rabbits, they’re _all_ his share - in silence.

He tends his swords and armor, and makes sure Roach is comfortable for the night, and rolls out his bedroll, and the cat curls up next to the fire with its paws tucked under its chest and blinks at him. Well. Alright then.

“Goodnight, cat,” Geralt says. It’ll probably be gone in the morning - run off into the woods and eaten by something, most likely.

“ _Mrp_ ,” says the cat.

It’s not gone in the morning. It’s sitting next to Roach, licking its little paws, and Roach is nosing curiously at its head. Well, they get along; that’s...good?

It hops into the saddlebag when it sees Geralt getting up. Geralt sighs, and tacks Roach up, and if he’s a little gentler than usual when he straps the saddlebags on, he’s just concerned about his potions in their fragile vials.

It’s also purely a coincidence that he actually bothers to stop and eat around midday - a pheasant that hadn’t dodged fast enough when he threw a pebble at it - and also purely a coincidence that the pheasant is large enough that he doesn’t feel the need to eat all of it, so the cat can have an entire wing.

It’s just because it’s a surprisingly large bird, that’s all. And he already had two rabbits last night. He’s just...a little full. That’s _all_. He’s certainly not going out of his way to feed the poor scrawny cat.

“ _Mrp_ ,” says the cat, and hops back into the saddlebag like it belongs there.

*

The cat sleeps by his fire again the next night, and the next, and the next. During the day, it stays curled up in Geralt’s saddlebag, apparently sleeping. It sometimes leaps _out_ of the saddlebag, startling Geralt, and goes darting off into the underbrush beside the path; the first time it does that, he assumes it has left, but he’s not a furlong down the road when he hears an insistent _mrp!_ behind him, and looks back to see the cat trotting after him, tail held high. It’s...it’s looking a lot sleeker and happier than it did back in that barn, even after only a couple of days.

Slowly, Geralt opens the saddlebag’s flap, and the cat executes a rather impressive leap and squirms into the bag again. Roach flicks her ears but doesn’t object. Geralt eyes the saddlebag - one glowing eye shows from the dimness - and shrugs, and nudges Roach back into motion.

After that, he waits for the cat to finish whatever it’s doing in the underbrush; it never takes more than a quarter of an hour or so. He can spare the time. He can spare the bits of rabbit and pheasant and pigeon and deer that he tosses to the cat, can spare the space in his saddlebag. It’s no skin off his nose to allow the cat to accompany him; he’s certainly not going out of his way to make it _easier_ on the creature.

He sort of figures it will leave when they reach another town, a nice big one with, Geralt presumes, plenty of mice for a cat to catch. It certainly hops out of the saddlebag when he untacks Roach in the stable, and goes padding around the stall, sniffing everything, and then hops up onto the wooden wall between the stalls and vanishes into the hayloft with a slightly improbable leap. Geralt reminds himself that it isn’t _his_ cat, and goes to see if there are any contracts here.

He leaves two days later, having taken care of a nest of drowners and actually gotten paid, for a minor miracle, without having to yell or snarl or intimidate anyone. As he’s tacking Roach up, there’s a soft _thump_ , and he looks over to see the cat padding across the stall.

It hops into its saddlebag - _the_ saddlebag, Geralt’s potions saddlebag - and curls up, and Geralt straps the bag to the saddle and leads Roach out of the stable, and definitely doesn’t feel sort of warm and happy that the little creature has chosen to travel with him again.

He also _definitely_ doesn’t go slightly out of his way to catch a pheasant that day because he’s noticed that the cat has a minor but definite preference for pheasant over pigeon. It’s just easier to catch pheasants, that’s all.

He keeps expecting the cat to leave, either to slink off into the forest and become a wild thing like its distant relatives, or to decide a life as a barn cat is far more suited to its taste than a life in Geralt’s saddlebag. But the days turn into weeks turn into _months_ , and the cat grows plump and sleek and well-groomed, and it sleeps by Geralt’s fire and rides in his saddlebag and _mrp_ s at him when he tosses it scraps of meat and offal, and he...sort of gets accustomed to its company.

It’s quiet, at least, and the cat hair can’t contaminate his potions while they’re in sealed vials, and in any case it’s black, so the fur doesn’t show on his clothing.

And it’s maybe a little nice to have something else to talk to, besides Roach.

*

He turns north towards Kaer Morhen as the year rolls on towards winter, and on the first truly _cold_ night, a night when he actually bothers to build a bit of a windbreak out of fallen branches and coax Roach into lying down beside him to share warmth, he wakes up in the middle of the night to a weight on his chest.

He almost flings it off, thinking some monster or other has managed to get the drop on him somehow, but he looks down in time to see glowing green eyes with slits, so like his own yellow ones.

The cat is _curled up on his chest_.

Geralt stares at the cat. The cat blinks at him, very slowly, and then puts its head down and closes its eyes.

Oh.

Geralt holds very still until he finally falls asleep again.

In the morning, the cat hops neatly off his chest, as though sleeping atop a witcher is a perfectly normal thing to do, and Geralt tacks Roach up and scrapes out the fire and gets back on the road just as he normally does, with the cat in its saddlebag as usual. Presumably that was a one-time thing, the cat sleeping on him - maybe it just wanted to be close to Roach. It quite likes Roach, and she seems fond of it, too.

The next night, though, he’s barely lain down before the cat hops up onto his chest. Geralt makes a sort of startled noise - it’s surprisingly heavy for such a small animal - and the cat looks down at him and _mrp_ s and -

And leans down, one paw awkwardly braced in the hollow of his throat, and nudges its head against his cheek.

Geralt makes a strangled noise, because _paw on throat_ but also because _it touched him_ , and the cat backs up and curls itself into a little puff of black fur on his chest, and apparently goes to sleep.

Geralt lies there stiff as a board for a moment, and then slowly pulls his blanket up over himself and the cat. It doesn’t move.

It stays there, a warm weight over his slow-beating heart, for the whole chilly night. Geralt has long since trained himself to sleep quietly, without thrashing or turning over, and he’s oddly grateful for that, because it means he doesn’t disturb the cat. He does end up lying still for a while after he wakes, wondering how to _dislodge_ the cat without actually touching it or otherwise distressing it unduly: it seems perfectly happy to stay curled up on his chest for the next few hours. Eventually Roach whickers, expecting her morning feed, and the cat uncurls and leaps off Geralt’s chest and goes to wind around Roach’s legs, _mrp_ ing happily.

It sleeps atop him every night after that. It’s...nice, if odd, having the little creature curled up into a warm, purring ball. It’s also nice, if even odder, that it seems to have decided to mark the end of every evening by bumping its head against his cheek or chin. It’s so _soft_ , astonishingly pleasant, and Geralt desperately wants to try to pet it, but he doesn’t think he could bear it if the cat flinched from his hands, or fled into the wilderness, or struck out with its claws. It can’t truly hurt him, of course, but - it trusts him, now. He doesn’t want to break that trust. Best not to risk it.

The last few days are always the worst; the Trail up to Kaer Morhen hasn’t gotten any _easier_ since the pogroms, and it’s snowing in earnest this far north. The cat doesn’t come out of its saddlebag except for _extremely_ brief stops to relieve its bowels; Geralt’s just glad it _does_ care enough about its own comfort to get out, since he doesn’t particularly want to have to clean cat piss out of his saddlebag. It sleeps under the blankets, tucked between him and Roach, in the warmest spot it can find.

It’s in the saddlebag when he leads Roach through the ruined gates of Kaer Morhen, and doesn’t emerge until he’s untacked Roach and brought all his gear up to his room and stoked up the fire Vesemir has laid ready for his arrival. Then it hops out and goes poking around his room, investigating every corner, slinking under the bed and behind the clothes-chest, until it finally curls up on the hearth, dead center on the big bearskin, and makes a contented sort of _mrp_.

Geralt leaves it there, and goes down to see what sort of chores Vesemir needs done. Hopefully the cat will be fine alone for a while; if he’s very lucky, it might even catch and eat some of the mice that have taken up residence in the half-ruined fortress.

The cat is nowhere to be found when he makes it up the stairs late that night, having spent the evening drinking probably a little too much White Gull and telling Vesemir about the more interesting hunts he’s had in the last year. He leaves the door open just a crack, in case the cat returns, and falls into bed with a grateful sigh: clean sheets, and thick blankets, and his own well-stuffed mattress, and none of it smells like an endless succession of travelers, the way every inn bed does.

He doesn’t wake up when the cat comes in, but when the first rays of sunlight sneak in around the curtains to rouse him, the cat is there, curled up on the pillow beside his head. Geralt smiles at it; it’s looking much sleeker and happier than it did when he first encountered it. It looks up when he moves, and blinks at him slowly.

“Guess we’re home, cat,” he says softly. “What d’you think of Kaer Morhen?”

“ _Mrp_ ,” says the cat, unwinding itself and stretching luxuriously, showing off quite impressive teeth when it yawns. Geralt sits up and does a little stretching of his own, reveling in being able to take his time about waking, not roll out of bed or off his bedroll and be instantly ready for the day.

The cat walks over onto his lap, stretches up to plant its forepaws on his chest, and nudges his chin with its head. “ _Mrp_ ,” it says insistently.

“Mrp?” Geralt inquires, chuckling a little.

The cat bumps him again, and then hops off his lap and pads over to where his hand lies on the blanket, and bumps its head against his fingers. Very, very carefully, Geralt lifts his hand, and it nudges itself under it so that his hand runs down the full length of its back.

 _Fuck_ , but it’s soft.

The cat _mrp_ s demandingly, and Geralt very warily strokes it again. Apparently that’s what it wanted, because it starts to purr, a low pleasant rumble, and pads back onto his lap and lies down. Geralt keeps petting it, slowly and carefully, and the cat purrs, the sound like a thunderstorm far in the distance.

Vesemir comes looking for him eventually, and stands there in the doorway staring. Geralt looks up and offers his mentor a crooked smile.

“Don’t think I can get up just yet,” he says. The cat is a limp heap of black fur draped across his thighs, purring almost fit to shake the bed, and every time he tries to stop petting it, it looks up at him with accusing green eyes and _mrp_ s in irritation.

“...Guess not,” Vesemir says. “Huh. Don’t think a witcher’s ever had a cat before.”

Geralt considers the animal in his lap for a moment. “Still don’t,” he says at last. “Think _it’s_ got _me_.”

Vesemir chuckles. “Maybe so. Try to make it down for luncheon, hm?”

“Do my best,” Geralt agrees, and if he spends the next hour sitting quietly on his bed, running his hands wonderingly over the cat’s fur and listening to its rumbling purr, well, it’s not as though he’s inconveniencing anyone.

“I think,” he says, very softly, when the cat has finally decided to curl up on his pillow again and freed him to go and see to the morning’s chores, “that I am going to call you Good Fortune.”

The cat purrs.

**Author's Note:**

> With rather belated thanks to tnico, who suggested a synergy between witchers and black cats.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] All Places Are Alike To Him](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26477305) by [Chantress](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chantress/pseuds/Chantress)




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